Barriers and drivers to sustainable business model innovation: Organization design and dynamic capabilities

Abstract

Sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) in large multinational corporations is increasingly perceived as a key driver for competitive advantage and corporate sustainability. While the SBMI literature acknowledges that corporations require dynamic capabilities to innovate their business model for sustainability, the role of organization design to nurture dynamic capabilities for this purpose has been scantly addressed. By taking a qualitative research approach, we address how organization design affects dynamic capabilities needed for SBMI. Accordingly, from an organization design perspective, we identified barriers and drivers on three levels: the institutional, the strategic, and the operational. The contributions of our study are threefold. First, we contribute to a recent discussion on how organizational design affects dynamic capabilities needed for business model innovation. Second, we present a multi-level framework to show how interconnected barriers and drivers obstruct or enable SBMI. Third, our study answers a call to advance theoretical perspectives on SBMI.